OVERCLOCKERS DARK THEME:
To use this you will need stylish installed or know how to add style scripts to your browser.

NEW OVERCLOCKERS FAVICON:
There’s a few different ways to install this, if you’ve got firefox and stylish then click here, for chrome click here.

Enjoy

Anyway I’m a little disappointed with the favicon on the web albums page as it’s got a horrible white background so, being the geek I am I decided to pop up a few styles on userstyles.org to rectify the issue:

Transparent favicon | Square favicon | Square and transparent favicon

Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you’ll not, either way you can also check out all of my userstyles here.

These picks are based mainly on my own personal choice but I have tried to pick out what I think are the best in all categories based on presentation, enjoyment and longevity. In general I am recommending games that look good, play well and suit the mobile phone format, in particular I like to point out games that make use of tilt controls or make good use of touch screen. Also note the lack of 3D games, there may be some good 3D games out there but personally I’m not impressed with a lot of the 3D games as if I wanted 3D gaming I would use my PSP, I think android is best suited to 2D, for now. So read on for my top Android picks.

Labyrinth
The first purchase I ever made on the Android market and still one of my favourite games, the massive selection of levels and casual gameplay are great for those times when you’ve got a few minutes to spare here or there. You’re probably already familiar with Labyrinth but just in case you aren’t you have a wooden maze in front of you with lots of holes, your job is to avoid the holes and get to the finish. Use of the accelerometer in your phone makes this feel great, like tilting the maze in real life. As I mentioned before there are hundreds of user generated levels to pick from, some easy and some insanely hard but all very addictive.

Diner Dash
Already a hit on just about every other platform Diner Dash 2 is a great little time waster. You play the waitress in a diner who has to serve all of the customers. Enjoyment is derived from managing where all the customers go, getting their meals and cleaning up all as quickly and efficiently as possible. There are plenty of different diners to work in with different customers and quirks with each, not only does this add more challenge as you play through but it also gives you some variety. Graphics, whilst not mind blowing are neat and kind of retro. Controls are obviously touch based and work out pretty well. Another good point about Diner Dash is that you can pick it up and play a level whenever you have a few spare minutes then pick up where you left off another time.

Tiki Towers
I wasn’t too impressed when I saw screenshots of this game but it’s wormed it’s way into my favourites. If you have played world of goo on the PC this is basically the same game… With monkeys. You have to build a bamboo structure for the monkeys to pass across and pick up bananas on the way, easy to start with but gets more tricky as you play on. Tiki towers is well presented with some swish menus and well drawn sprites, sound is ok but nothing to write home about. I just love building those moneys a bamboo suspension bridge.

What the doodle?
What a great game, it’s just like playing Pictionary online right in the palm of your hand. 5 players are rounded up and you each take it in turns to draw. It’s a great little game to play when you have the time and you’ll probably end up playing it for some time after you pick it up. Not only is it fun to guess other people’s drawings but it’s also even more fun to laugh at how bad some people and maybe you are at drawing. Anything else you need to know about What the doodle you can find out here, I wrote a whole post on it.

Radiant
If you like scrolling shooters then chances are you’ll love radiant. You take the role of a little white ship who has set out to destroy this big red space invader… Or something along those lines. Basically you’re stuck to the bottom of the screen space invaders style and you can move left to right to shoot and avoid enemies, touch controls work really well here. The graphics and sounds are simple, retro and impressive. Lots of stuff on screen at once, lots of colours and lots of action make Radiant a really fun game to play. Different weapons and upgrades and bosses keep this game interesting throughout.

Doodle Jump
I’ve recently become quite addicted to this great little game, the simple premise is to get your little doodle character as high as possible jumping on platforms and dodging all the bad guys. The phone is played with tilt controls, tilting left or right moves the character and pressing the screen fires some kind of bogie bullet to kill enemies. The game is also improving over time with the developers adding more features and making it a little ore challenging. All in all the graphics have a lovely hand drawn style to them and the game is simple and addictive.

Sky Force
Another shooter this time, Sky Force has been out for some time now for a few different platforms, I played it first on my Nokia 6630 on Symbian and this is basically the same game. Controls are touch based and work ok but not ideal, plenty of times fingers will get in the way of enemies and ruin your day. That aside I still had a lot of fun getting through this game and got a lot further than I ever did on my Nokia. The graphics are pretty good but as this is an old game they have been up-scaled and do not look particularly good. The music for me makes the game, some brilliant thumping retro tunes accompany you through the levels.

Jewellust
Another old favourite of mine and my family, everyone knows the premise and everyone enjoys the game. This is basically Bejewelled but I think a much nicer, polished and complete experience. Swapping gems has never been so fun. Graphics are sharp and high resolution, control is spot on and sound is great too. Another minor advantage over Bejewelled is that you don’t have to wait for gems to finish dropping before you start your next move, a very minor but nice feature nonetheless. Anything else you need to know about Jewellust you can see in my old review here, note that back then, for whatever reason it was called Jewerlust.

Drop
There is not much to say about this game, but I think it just sneaks in to my top list due to it’s simple nature and it’s well put together gameplay. Drop is simple, you have to guide your red ball down through the gaps in endless platforms with the aid of your accelerometer, tilting your phone from side to side and making your balls bounce has never been such fun. Graphics and sound are nothing spectacular but are perfect for the job I think.

If you have ever played Pictionary you’ll be familiar with the concept of What the Doodle. You are dropped in a room with four other people and you each get two turns drawing a phrase. Hilarity ensues when you have no idea what’s being drawn or no idea how to draw a phrase.

So how does it work on Android? Well obviously it’s online and connects straight away to the other people playing, most people are using the free (lite) version which only supports easy difficulty but more and more people seem to be playing every day. Needless to say I have never had a problem getting into a game on easy mode. Could do with some more people to buy the full version, currently only £1 meaning there’s a few more modes to play for everyone. Buying also lets you draw your own avatar which people will see in the game.

It’s a cherry!

Drawing with the touch screen on my G1 was great, my finger wasn’t the most precise of drawing implements but it did the job perfectly well and I was surprised how easily people guessed some of my worse doodles. There are a few problems of course, with people writing when they can’t be bothered but there’s a system in place to boot players who cheat or who do not play in the spirit of the game. There’s also great stat tracking with details on your games played and overall points.

The whole experience works smoothly and effortlessly even on my piddly G1, there are a few problems with other handsets and virtual keyboards as obviously it takes up some of the screen. I’ve never had a force close and can’t really fault the experience I’ve had. Connection wise it even seemed to work pretty well over 3G and never seemed to drop from a game at all.

All in all it’s a great app and one of the most fun I’ve ever played on Android. With the free version having enough fun for most people and the paid version being a meager £1 I can only see more people playing and buying in the future. Hopefully I’ll contribute to that and get some people to play some of the advanced game types. QR code for lite version in the comments below.

So the first instinct was the old oversubscribing argument that for hosting so cheap they must be oversubscribed and hence slow speeds and crappy underpowered servers. However my experience has been quite the opposite. The first thing I have to congratulate them on is the excellent bandwidth and server stability. I’ve had less problems with Dreamhost than with any host I’ve used. There has been the occasional minute of downtime, but I’m hardly a multimillion dollar e-commerce site and these occurrences have been rare. Not to mention that as a continuing customer I still continue to get free rewards like a year’s free domain payment.

Secondly I have to praise their support systems and personnel, they are a light-hearted and helpful bunch who have always been there to help me out with any questions I’ve had quickly and professionally. Also of note is their forum and the wiki they keep up to date and full of helpful information. There are guides there on many aspects of the hosting packages and control panel. It was particularly helpful to me in setting up awstats on my site.

One thing that may put you off is Dreamhost’s custom control panel software, I’ve used cpanel and plesk in the past which are both pretty good systems though Dreamhost’s panel may take a little getting used to it has every feature I’ve used in cpanel and plesk and a lot more to boot. It will even automatically set up all your domain records for using Google apps so getting your own email through Gmail is as easy as possible.

So all in all I have to give Dreamhost a shining review, they seem secure, stable and helpful. Their latest deal is aroud $9 for the same package I’m on at the moment:

More is not always better
Blu-ray boasts a fantastic video experience with eye popping 1920×1080 resolution, up to 40Mbps throughput and uncompressed audio. How can anyone snub those specs? Well it would seem the average consumer is unimpressed, take for example the uncompressed audio, every time I get into a Blu-ray debate uncompressed audio is one of the main talking points, fantastic studio perfect sound can’t be bad can it? Well no but it also is not necessarily good, take for example MP3, a heavily compressed audio format that the majority of consumers have accepted as standard and easily acceptable for listening to all their music, even DVD audio is highly superior to MP3. So the question becomes: Can people tell the difference between MP3, DVD and uncompressed, and more importantly do they care?

I can safely say I for one do not. As someone with a competent audio setup with a dedicated amp and floor standing speakers MP3 is fine, DVD is fine and personally even though I’m a bit of an audiophile I’m pretty sure I would not be able to tell the difference between uncompressed and DVD. Scale that across the market and most people use only their TV’s built in speakers and I guarantee whilst I’m not a massive audiophile my auditory standards are quite far above the norm.

Next on the chopping board is the high res visuals and I’m going to fill you in on a little background first, I used to rent a room from someone and had my own 32″ HDTV wall mounted right above my computer which meant I was always sat no more than 2 feet away from it and usually less. This allowed me to experience some really stunning visuals from HD videos and I was hooked. Skip ahead a year or two and I move into a house of my own, the same 32″ TV is sat in the large living room and my viewing distance is increased to something like 6 feet. HD becomes less wow and I start thinking that maybe I need a bigger TV. At about 6 feet away from my 32″ HD still looks good but it doesn’t look “great”.

And now it comes down to justification, is the improved picture worth the extra I will have to put down for a Blu-ray player and the Blu-ray discs? For me again this is a no, sure if I had a bigger TV with 1080p suppport it might be a different story but there lies the issue with market acceptance. Although more and more people are buying HD sets there are still a great many people (I would wager a vast majority) who still have SD sets or 720p sets and have them set up in their living room sitting a good 6 or so feet away. Yet again I am a bit of an elitist when it comes to video, I loathe watching badly transferred DVDs and DIVX copies of my DVDs are just not the same! But still to me, the visual elitist I find it hard to justify shelling out for something that is marginally improving my viewing experience and will only cost me more in the long run for discs.

Versus DVD
DVD is still the biggest physical medium for video and it still has a lot to offer in the age of High Definition and Blu-ray, the biggest selling point for DVD is it’s price. Economies of scale mean that DVDs are cheaper and easier to buy than ever but Blu-ray is still more expensive making Blu-ray more of an indulgence. So what are the compelling reasons to indulge?

Well the video and audio has been discussed above and they apply equally to DVD. But there is another dimension to DVD which narrows the gap and that is up-scaling, DVDs have a lot of untapped bitrate squeezed in there and DVD is the perfect candidate for reprocessing to HD resolutions. Anyone who has an Xbox can tell you of the fantastic job it does of up-scaling DVDs, personally I can’t live without it it makes DVDs look so crisp and clear and gives them quality approaching HD. This is another barrier in the adoption of Blu-ray, DVDs for me still look fantastic when up-scaled and narrow that important gap of how much better Blu-ray actually looks. Again for me on my 32″ that far away the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is getting even more minimal.

The competition
Here is the real clincher for me and probably the most important hurdle for Blu-ray to overcome, yes Blu-ray saw of HD-DVD as a competitor but though this might have seemed as the battle won it is only be beginning of the fight for Blu-ray. Since DVD was launched the market has been changing rapidly and adopting less conventional means of getting their media. Itunes alone has shifted over ten billion songs and are now offering HD content without the need for any hardware. The Xbox 360 is in 35 million homes and offers on demand 1080p streaming of the latest movies, not to mention the multitude of cable, satellite and terrestrial HD mediums.

Do people really want to go out and buy a brand new Blu-ray player for ~£100 and then buy physical media for £15 a pop when they can use their existing games console, PC or television provider to stream those movies for a third of the price. In today’s on demand culture I think people are questioning how often they actually watch the DVDs they buy and for some it may only be once or twice anyway and when you have the choice to be able to watch that movie at any time without having to pop out to the shops it becomes a much easier sell. Of course for those that watch films over and over again, or just love to watch them a lot Blu-ray may be a good choice for now.

Conclusion
I didn’t think I would need a whole conclusion section but I have rattled on for so long I think I need to wrap things up. Taking all of the above into account for me it is hard to justify investing in Blu-ray in the near future or maybe ever, HD streaming is only going to become more popular and the vendors are only going to multiply. This coupled with the negligible advantages Blu-ray offers leads me to think that Blu-ray will never reach the saturation of DVD or will ever gain true market acceptance as a mainstream product and maybe make in a niche for videophiles.

Let me know what you think.

I was a bit dubious when I first heard Perfect Dark was coming to XBLA, I figured it would be some re-hashed mess probably only single player and minimal multiplayer, the usual kind of hack-job. 4J Studios have however done a fantastic job of porting this masterpiece to the 360 and have included everything from the original game and more, who can groan at 1080p resolution and remastered textures. Read on for a lot more nostalgia and some actual opinions on the 360 version.

Dr Caroll, world’s first AI eunuch

It’s been 10 years since Perfect Dark was released for the N64 but memories of Rare’s fantastic shooter are still fresh. I was following the game’s release online and via magazines at the time and even wrote a preview for the website I ran back then. When it was released I spent hours upon hours playing through every difficulty, every gun range, every challenge and unlocked almost everything the game had to offer. I enjoyed every second of the weapons, gadgets and level design, however an act of fate was to seperate me from Perfect Dark for a decade… The save game on my cartridge became corrupted and I was no longer able to access anything I had unlocked, needless to say I didn’t play the game much after that, it was a bitter ending to a great experience.

Now, ten years on with trepidation I boot into the Perfect Dark XBLA trial game and expect the worst, however as soon as I finished a game of multiplayer and it prompted me to buy I couldn’t hesitate for a second and slapped down those 800 gamerpoints faster than you can say Mr Blonde.

From then on it was pure nostalgia meltdown! I started off a bit of co-op with my brother, we blasted through a good few levels, seemingly a lot faster than I remember. It was great fun playing split-screen co-op, shouting at each other for failing missions and getting stuck in doorways. We both loved the original and played it to death, it felt like riding a bike. We played some multiplayer and then got down to completing the game and unlocking those all-important cheats: all weapons & infinite ammo. It’s funny how even after all this time the game can still pose a great challenge and be so much fun. Of course there is now the added leader-board system so you can see how well you are doing versus everyone else. A great addition.

Graphical comparison

Speaking of additions, the new high resolution remastered graphics are great, they add quite considerably to my rose tinted glasses however they have also re-modelled all of the weapons in the game, they now look a lot more chunky and there is a lot more detail to be seen but they do act exactly the same as the original. There are some great improvements in character detail too. It seems 4J Studios have spared no expense in bringing us the greatest balance between historical accuracy and bringing it more up-to-date and I salute them for doing an almost perfect job.

The other main addition is of course online multiplayer, something that is commonplace in this generation was almost unheard of in the days of the N64, we were confined to huddling around our CRT TVs grabbing a controller each and getting into brawls after each game. There’s something to be said for that old-school purity because the online mode can seem a little vacant, at least compared the the original frantic friend losing scenario. I still need to get a good group of friends together and have some private matches, I’m sure they’ll be great.

The single player campaign is still fun today, especially if you play it at the higher difficulty settings. The story is somewhat lacking by today’s standards but the nostalgia effect is enough to compensate for any shortfall. I’m still having fun playing through the levels on Secret Agent and Perfect Agent difficulties and still ready to unlock more cheats.

The one disappointment in the port is Elvis… I don’t know how to put this… They’ve made him look all sensible and gritty. Whether or not this is closer to Rare’s original vision of Elvis I do not know but I think he lacks that little bit of quirky-ness he had in the original. Not really a big issue, just a tiny niggle.

I don’t think I have a bad word to say about the original or this port (except for the Elvis thing), if you liked the original then you should definitely get your hands on the 360 version if you haven’t ever played the original it will probably still be a great little game to waste some hours on, who knows you may fall in love with it as I did all those years ago.

Thankfully though Bad Company 2 is by no means a perfect sequel it expands on the Bad Company name in a number of great ways, so read on and bear with me through my first real “review” for some insight into this MW2 destroyer.

The game looks great.

To start with lets get the campaign out of the way, I was underwhelmed by the campaign in the original Bad Company, though the characters were somewhat lovable the general plot was a little lacking and there seemed to bee a lot of driving for driving’s sake in a lot of the missions. Bad Company 2′s campaign however is pretty good, I wouldn’t rate the story among the best but it looks fantastic and the characters are a really great bunch and to quote the game not “a bunch of special ops douchebags with their pussy ass heartbeat sensors”. There are a few references to MW2 in the game and they left me sniggering because in my opinion although the story in Bad Company 2 is not as “sensationalist” as MW2 it does not take itself too seriously. All the characters actually have character, they’re a lovable bunch of honourable army rejects. This makes the game a lot more entertaining to get through as you’re not listening to drivel mission briefings and pretending to care.

Some of my favourite parts in Bad Company 2 have been where the characters are having a little fun and taking liberties with the game mechanics and where I was looking in awe at how well this engine renders massive scenery. And that’s one of the best aspects of the Bad Company campaign, it is not exceptionally linear, I’m not saying it’s totally free, but there’s really big maps for you to play on leaving you the option to snipe, rush in or whatever takes your fancy. Personally I love to snipe from a distance and one of my favourite scenes was sniping enemies in a thunderstorm, it felt real gritty.

That’s a trait that carries over to the multiplayer as well, the maps are so vast and expansive you feel like you’re on an actual battlefield unlike most multiplayer games where you’re walled into a small area to keep you boxed in and fighting. That’s one thing you shouldn’t worry about either with Bad Company 2, the flow of the game is great and the action is non stop.

Tanks for the memories

It’s really worth noting the key game mechanics before going into further detail about game modes, the map areas are pretty big so everyone is split into squads of 4, when you die you have the option to spawn at your base or to spawn next to a squad member, this is great for avoiding long runs from base to base and allows one person to push up for others to spawn on them. Also of note are the vehicles, there are plenty in the Bad Company universe and they really define the game. From tanks to quad bikes, they’re all essential in moving up towards a base and securing objectives quickly. This leads neatly on to the introduction of battlefield tactics into the game, like slowly moving up towards an enemy base behind the cover of the tank, it’s awesome to have to actually do that to win.

Next is really the most important part of Bad Company, the classes: There are four classes in Bad Company 2, medic, recon, assault and engineer. They all have their roles to fill from repairing tanks to resupplying ammo to your team mates, thankfully they’re all pretty well balanced and it’s a joy to figure out which class you’re going to choose per map and plan out your tactics. This is something that has been expanded on in Bad Company 2 as you can now customise your classes much better, for instance in the original there was no weapon customisations and sometimes you would be stuck with a great gun that had terrible iron sights, now you can change all this by adding different launchers, scopes and a whole bunch of other “specialisations”. This adds a whole other level of tactics and planning and also makes the game feel a lot more personal.

The last pillar of Bad Company gameplay is destruction, or in Bad Company 2 “Destruction 2.0″, basically this means that almost every building, tree or wall can be utterly destroyed, there are plenty of games where the battlefield is totally unrecognisable at the end of a map with buildings being blown to bits by tanks. It adds a really dynamic element to the game meaning that no two games are alike, you could have a great sniping spot in one game and that same spot could have been totally collapsed in another. Bad Company 2 introduces another level of destruction meaning you can bring down buildings on top of people and make small holes in walls to shoot through.

That’s it for the basics, the main game mode you’ll be playing in Bad Company 2 is “Rush” in this mode one team is chosen to defend a crate from the other team who can destroy it in a number of ways. Firstly they can plant a charge on it like a number of other games, you can also fire at it with tanks and rockets to wear it down an destroy it from a distance. The third option makes use of one of the other great game mechanics: Destruction, you can actually blow a building’s support away and collapse it on top of the objective. It’s a great game mode and sees people employing a number of great tactics to get those crates.

The other modes are squad deathmatch (4v4v4v4), I would not recommend this unless you’re with a squad of friends to co-ordinate with, it can be very unforgiving if you’re trying to go it alone. Conquest, this is the tried and tested capture the flag mode with a bunch of unique maps not found in rush, I’m slowly warming to it’s more vehicle based combat. There’s also a squad level rush mode with less crates and a max of 4V4, I haven’t really played this much as I prefer the larger battle offered by the other game modes.

Squad play is essential

“Where are the problems?” I hear you cry! I’m a pretty unforgiving “reviewer” and I don;t usually get this far in a review without ripping some part of the game apart, and there is dirt on Bad Company 2. The main problems I have with the game is the lack of features that were present in the original multiplayer game. Most notably the minimap in BC2 is hugely inferior to the one in BC1, in bad company 1 they were clear and informative with roads clearly displayed and buildings displayed in actual 3D down there. The minimap in Bad Company 2 is pretty much a blur, it works I guess, it’s not gamebreaking but there’s also no need to have changed it.

Another thing that annoys me a little is the new health system, it wasn’t really broken in BC1, health did not regenerate so close work with your squad and others was crucial, now it’s not so clear cut, with regenerating health I think a little has been taken away. There’s also the vehicle HUDs, it can be quite difficult on some maps to see where you’re aiming because the HUD becomes completely invisible on bright backgrounds.

Thankfully there have been some great improvements too, artillery has been totally removed which is great because it was only used to continually bombard enemy bases, the artillery has been replaced with a UAV which has a lot less fire-power but is a lot more fun to use. Personally I love using the enhanced optics specialisation and hanging back missiling the base from the distance. The UAV is also a great piece of kit for another new feature in Bad Company 2: Spotting, basically when you see an enemy you can spot them by pressing a button, they now show up on everyone’s minimap, this is a great way of improving co-ordination and everyone should spot. The only problem I have with this feature is that it’s a bit inaccurate, you can point it at where you think the enemy is and sometimes 2 or 3 people will light up that you can’t even see.

There has also been another fantastic improvement and that is to knifing, knifing is no longer a one-pwns-all weapon, it now takes a second or so to actually knife someone and there’s a delay. I no longer get killed from 10 feet away by someone with a knife.

Bad Company 2 comes out as a fantastic game and though some great things are missing there’s a lot more variety that has been added with the new customisations and game modes, I’m sure I’ll get a hell of a lot more playtime out of Bad Company 2 over the next few months and I won’t be trading it in for a long time. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes FPS and definitely to any players of MW2, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Please check out my BFBC2 Wallpapers.